Exit Lawyers

One recent evening, Philip Howard appeared before an audience at the New-York Historical Society, on Central Park West, where Herman Melville once lectured on the South Sea Islands, and James Fenimore Cooper discussed the Battle of Plattsburgh Bay, to talk about his new book, “Life Without Lawyers,” with Sir Harold Evans, the author and the former president of Random House. In the crowd was a mixture of civil libertarians, Howard relatives (including Alexandra Schlesinger, Arthur’s widow, who is Howard’s wife’s first cousin), students from John Jay College, who were reading Howard’s 1994 best-seller, “The Death of Common Sense,” and, yes, lawyers.

“I could sue you tonight for humiliating me,” Evans noted at the outset, “by displaying greater intelligence than I have!”

“Truth is a defense,” Howard replied.

“That’s defamation straightaway!” Evans declared.

Howard, who is sixty, sat balanced lightly on the edge of his chair (he is a longtime yogi), his long legs coiled under him, looking poised for action. He is tall and slim, and his silver-haired, senatorial head was inclined slightly, in that agreeable Jimmy Stewart way. Wearing a perfectly knotted tie that some say he sleeps in, a dark-navy suit, black shoes, and an elegant but not fancy watch, he looked every inch the establishmentarian. But actually he is the son of a Presbyterian minister from rural Kentucky and was plucked from humble circumstances after J.F.K. “discovered Appalachia,” as he put it, in 1962. He was sent on a scholarship to the Taft School, “which was like being sent to Mars,” and from there won a scholarship to Yale, where “life really began.” After moving to Manhattan, he married into a prominent New York family (the Cushings), began his career as a corporate lawyer (today, he is a partner at the firm of Covington & Burling), and devoted himself to preserving urban landmarks and sharing his good fortune with those less fortunate than he. For the past ten years, he has been the chairman of the Municipal Art Society, where he has earned a reputation as a man who knows how to get things done.

After Evans set the tone by informing audience members of all the things they were not allowed to do during the next hour—“no spitting, no talking, no cell phones, no frowning, no smiling (except when a joke is intended), no coughing, no touching”—Howard laid out the gist of his book’s argument. Americans face a crisis of authority, one brought on not by too few rules but by too many. These rules, he suggested, are a by-product of the “rights revolution,” which began in the sixties and has led to the demise of what he called “functioning authority structures.” We now live in a society where “teachers, doctors, camp counsellors, and government officials can’t do their jobs properly,” because “any time someone gets angry they can sue.” The result is chaos—frivolity in the courts and paralysis in government.

He talked about “lawyers who hang out at the intersection of tragedy and greed” and mentioned the recent case of a Washington, D.C., judge who sued a dry cleaner for fifty-four million dollars for losing a pair of pants.

“What!” Evans exclaimed.

Howard is delighted by President Obama’s call for a “new era of personal responsibility,” and says of the President (a law-school graduate, of course), “He is figuring out how to release the energy and creativity of American people by encouraging accountability.” But, for those efforts to succeed, Howard thinks we need to overcome “the tyranny of the angry man” shouting, “No, you can’t!”

In the course of researching his book, Howard asked hundreds of people the same question: “How do you feel?” A lot of them answered that they felt constricted by bureaucracy. Teachers told him that they spent half the time in the classroom keeping order, because their authority was undermined by students’ ”rights.” “We live in a society in which a teacher is afraid to discipline an eighth grader for fear of infringing his rights!” he said.

At one point, Evans, peering at the audience, noted, “There must be a lawyer or two in the audience?” About thirty hands bashfully went up.

“The number of lawyers in the workforce has doubled,” Howard said.

“Should we make it difficult for lawyers to graduate?” Evans asked. (Howard didn’t see how that was possible.) “Another thing you could do is cut legal fees.” Cheers and groans, in equal number, mingled.

Howard broached another of his bêtes noires: the removal of seesaws and other equipment from New York City’s parks, for liability reasons. “Seesaws are quite important, because they teach you to distrust people,” he said, and added, “I learned to distrust my brothers at a very early age.”

The good news is that everything is about to change. Howard, quickly limning two centuries of American history, pointed out that large social changes occur every forty years, and we are due for one right now. Someone from the audience asked, referring to his plan to reform society, “How optimistic can we be?” Howard smiled. “With your help,” he replied, and the old building seemed to whisper, Yes, we can. ♦

John Seabrook has been a contributor to The New Yorker since 1989 and became a staff writer in 1993.